Today we are riding through the national park.

The first lesson was how to pack sardines into a can. Fortunately, there was another bus leaving ahead of ours that only had 3 people booked on it. The driver invited us to join that one so we did. That was a great deal for us.

One thermometer I looked at today read 90 degrees. I think it was too hot for the animals to come out in force. 

Our first view of the mountain from the north side. All of yesterdays pictures were from the south side.

Ranger Nickolett, stopped our bus, came aboard, counted us than said to ask our bus driver if we had any questions. Hmmm, must be for revenue control from the private bus companies.

The glacial runoff here is gray and murky instead of the beautiful emerald of the Kenai waters.

Run off is pretty low for this time of year.

One of the shuttle buses that can take you as far as 90 miles into the park.

Every single animal picture that I took today was with 20X telephoto. This Dahl Sheep was more than a thousand yards away.

McKinley would appear larger each time that it came into view.

We were also starting to get a little more color on some of the side hills.

The glaciers have cut out some impressive valleys

It is a fourteen hour ride if you take the shuttle to the end.

There are no private vehicles allowed except for two days a year. A lottery is held for those two days and only 300 can win.

Anyone can travel the first 15 miles of paved road, but then it is restricted to only busses on the final 75 miles of dirt road.

There was a little skiff of snow on the ridges outlining the mountains as though in a coloring book.

We saw several Caribou, but all were pretty far away.

He looks like he is eating the snow. All Caribou have antlers but the males have theirs in summer and the females in winter.

The closer one gets, the more details you see.

Even the lesser mountains in the range are magnificent.

They average between 1000 and 1200 attempts to scale the mountain per year. About 50% of those are successful. The summit is at 20,320'

We only went 53 miles up the dirt road as most of the reviewers recommended this. I would too, unless you really like riding in a big bus.

These two girls were on a cultural exchange program.

They seemed to have a playful rivalry trying to upstage the other.

Since it is my blog, happy Lanny upstaged them both.

So did serious Lanny

Everyone just snapping away.

These guys had a friendly rivalry too trying to get the girl. 

Here is how it turned out. Sorry I didn't get the "rest of the story"

The real deal

Fake, but taken from the same compass direction

One last look back

The closest big game animal we saw today. He looks pretty scruffy.